Hollywood Hills hs-4 Page 16

  Raleigh decided that he needed to work out some details with his prissy partner before Nigel came back to do the switch. But how would he do that? He knew nothing about the European auctioneer and what the art could reasonably fetch. Was he completely at the mercy of Nigel’s true intentions? The more he came to dislike Nigel Wickland, the more worrisome the scheme became.

  Ten minutes later the phone buzzed from the cottage and Raleigh uttered a choked-off cry. Then he said, “It’s Marty Brueger!”

  Nigel lowered the camera and said, “Go tend to him, then. Christ, he’s virtually senile. You can handle it.” And he went back to composing his shot.

  Raleigh hurried out the side door and ran to the cottage. When he entered, Marty Brueger was in his pajamas, looking as though he’d forgotten why he rang.

  “Yes, Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said. “Do you need something?”

  “My teeth,” Marty Brueger said. “Where’s my teeth?”

  “Aren’t they in the glass where they usually are?”

  “Don’t you think I looked there?” the old man said.

  “We’ll find them, Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said. “Why don’t you just sit in your chair and relax and watch The Girls Next Door? That Hugh Hefner’s really a card, isn’t he?”

  “It’s not on now, Raleigh, and I can’t find the most recent videotape.”

  “You don’t need videotape anymore, Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said. “All of your favorite shows have been recorded for you, remember?”

  “I always forget how to do that TIVO shit,” Marty Brueger said.

  “I’ll go over it again with you,” Raleigh said. “Everything’s there for you anytime you want to watch. You just go to your stored programs and select whatever you wish.”

  “Even Showbiz Tonight?” Marty Brueger asked.

  “Every single episode,” Raleigh assured him. “You’ve got them there waiting for you.”

  “I still need my teeth,” the old man said.

  “I’ll do a thorough search for them,” Raleigh said.

  “If you find them, I’d like to go to one of those new trendy places for dinner,” Marty Brueger said. “Like Mr. Chow’s.”

  “Mr. Chow’s has been around a long time,” Raleigh said. “It’s not new but it’s still very popular with movie people.”

  “Spago isn’t new anymore either, is it?” Marty Brueger asked.

  “No, sir,” Raleigh said. “I think it’s older than Mr. Chow’s. And you might see some celebrities there as well.”

  “It’s funny how time plays tricks on your memory,” Marty Brueger said. “Do famous people still go to the Polo Lounge for lunch? People in the business who’re my age?”

  Raleigh thought, There’s nobody in the business your age, but he said, “I think so. I’ll find out for sure.”

  “Talking about restaurants has made me hungry,” Marty Brueger said. “Maybe I’ll stroll up to the house and look for something in the fridge that I can eat without teeth.”

  “No, no, Mr. Brueger!” Raleigh cried. “Just sit down and relax. I’ll fix you something tasty for a snack, but first you need something to chew with, don’t you?”

  “I’ll tell you, Raleigh,” Marty Brueger said. “It’s a sad time in a man’s life when his dick’s gone missing and he can’t even find his fucking teeth.”

  While Raleigh Dibble searched for Marty Brueger’s teeth, Jonas Claymore and Megan Burke were driving toward Woodrow Wilson Drive, eyeing many potential targets, as well as checking their maps and addresses for any homes belonging to stars or celebutants.

  “I think Outpost has some juicy targets,” Jonas said to Megan, who had downed two perks and was zoning as he drove. “But I like it way up here, too.”

  “I think we’re going to die like Bonnie and Clyde,” Megan said bleakly.

  “Who?”

  “The old movie? You know, about the bank robbers? A guy and a chick rob banks and it’s all a trip until they get shot to pieces. I think that’s how we’ll end up.”

  “Who wants to get old?” Jonas said.

  “Yeah, but it might be nice to get old enough to walk in a bar and buy a drink without showing a phony ID. Is that asking too much?”

  “You got no imagination,” Jonas said.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “I can imagine us checking out like Bonnie and Clyde now that we’ve decided to really go bad.”

  Ignoring her, Jonas said, “I musta seen a hundred houses that look good to me. Like that one there.”

  He pointed out one of the many Spanish Colonial Revivals, usually done in the mission- or hacienda-style with a red-tile roof and white-plastered walls. This one was large, with a detached guesthouse and a solid barrier of junipers that almost hid the main house from view except from the road above. Jonas pulled to the side and stopped.

  “Get out for a minute,” he said.

  “What for? I’m tired!”

  “You’re always tired,” he said. “Get out.”

  Megan opened the door, mumbling, got out, and shuffled along behind him. He strolled over to the junipers and pulled two of them apart, peeking in at the property.

  “See,” he said. “This place has more land than the others. Do you know what land costs up here?”

  Megan just shook her head, and Jonas said, “Plenty, that’s how much. I bet there’s a tennis court down behind there. This is the kinda place we should go for. But not now. Look, there’s a van down there by the garage. It says something on the side but it’s parked at an angle, so I can’t read it. Probably a delivery guy or a plumber or something.”

  “Can we go home now?” Megan said.

  He said, “What we gotta do is come back here sometime when there’s no car in the driveway and no gardeners around and ring the bell.”

  “There’s a big gate,” Megan said.

  “We ring the bell at the gate,” Jonas said. “There must be one. And if there’s no answer we go over the wall and check it out and see what we can see.”

  “And what if there’s another dog like last time?” Megan said. “Maybe a vicious guard dog?”

  That stopped him. His back was still sending him messages from time to time. He said, “Okay, we’ll come by a couple more times on other days before we try out a house like this. Meanwhile, we can go for more conventional places where we can see the yards and figure out if there’s a guard dog or not.”

  “Let’s go home and I’ll call my mom,” Megan said.

  “For what?”

  “I’ll beg her for a loan of two hundred. I’ll say that I’m staying with a friend and we’re being evicted on Saturday unless we can come up with the money. She always says she’ll never give up on me. I’m her firstborn and I don’t think she’ll let me down. Not that I’m proud of it.” She paused and said, “I just need a taste of ox.”

  Jonas pressed hard on the small of his back, groaned, and said, “I wonder why God is letting me get knocked on my ass so much lately?”

  Raleigh Dibble found Marty Brueger’s missing dentures in the trash can by the toilet, but how they got there was anybody’s guess. He figured it was the result of too much Irish whiskey. If the old man had any cash to speak of, that probably would’ve ended up shit-canned as well. But only Raleigh had access to the modest checking account at the local bank that Leona Brueger had left for groceries and other items in order to keep the house running smoothly while she was gone. She had opened the account with $4,000 and told him to phone her in Tuscany if any sort of emergency came up requiring more funds.

  “Mr. Brueger,” Raleigh said, “why don’t you sit in your chair and watch Oprah or something? I’m going up to the house now to make you a nice snack. How about one of my special omelets?”

  Marty Brueger nodded and said, “Got any more whiskey in the butler’s pantry up there?”

  “No, but I’ll run out and get some later,” Raleigh said.

  “Why don’t I go up there with you and look?” Marty Brueger said.

  “No, Mr
. Brueger!” Raleigh said. “Just rest. There might be another bottle. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll have all the rest I need pretty soon,” the old man muttered.

  Raleigh was a wreck by the time he got back to the house. But he was overjoyed to see that the floodlights had been turned off in the great room, and the tripod was lying on the floor. Nigel Wickland had finished.

  Raleigh said to him, “Did you get it done the way you wanted?”

  “It’s a wrap, as they say in Hollywood,” Nigel Wickland said with a satisfied grin. “The next trip here will be far briefer. These are all conventional frames, even if the paintings are not of a common size. It’ll be easy enough to make the poster board fit nicely. I think Sammy Brueger had them reframed with those ghastly ornate monstrosities in the past dozen years or so.”

  Raleigh was so relieved, he felt like sitting down. Now he had a headache, and he was a man who seldom got one. “When’re you coming back?”

  “It depends on how it goes at the lab,” Nigel said. “I’ll apply as much pressure as I can to my friend and I’ll offer him a bonus of several hundred dollars if he can speed up the process. But it can’t be done overnight, you know.”

  “Will you call me as soon as it’s done?”

  “Of course,” Nigel said. “But be careful never to use your name if you ever ring my office again. And don’t use my name when I ring you here. We must proceed precisely as planned.”

  We’re going to come to a new understanding before we’re through, Raleigh thought. But all he said was, “Yes, precisely.”

  FOURTEEN

  Viv Daley and Georgie Adams were “off the beach” and cleared for street duty while Force Investigation Division worked on building a twelve-inch-high stack of reports that would be presented to a Use-of-Force Board within nine months of the officer-involved shooting of Louis Dryden. Viv was not as jocular as she had been before that night, and nor was Georgie. Neither would ever speak of Cindy Kroll or her murdered baby again, at least not to each other.

  They both had been ordered down to Chinatown, where Behavioral Science Services had their offices, and each one spoke with a BSS psychologist about the event in Little Armenia. Georgie had given brief answers to every question that the shrink asked regarding the taking of a human life. He said that he’d killed a few insurgents in Iraq and that this had felt no different to him afterward. He simply shook his head when he was asked if he had gone upstairs and seen the strangled baby. Both officers had the typical cop’s distrust of shrinks from having seen and heard all that the profession had done with their “expert” opinions as witnesses for and against the prosecution in criminal cases.

  Viv said that as far as she was concerned, they had killed a boogeyman and she felt not a shred of doubt or remorse about his death. She was less forthcoming when asked by her questioner to talk about what she’d seen in Cindy Kroll’s apartment. The psychologist was a generation older than Viv and had gentle eyes and a motherly manner. At the very beginning of their session, she had come from behind her desk to sit next to Viv in one of the two client chairs. She asked Viv to call her Jane, but Viv never used the woman’s given name at any time during that meeting.

  When pressed repeatedly about her feelings concerning that horrific event, Viv reluctantly admitted to the psychologist that she’d grappled with impulses to contact the Department of Children and Family Services about the surviving child of Cindy Kroll. Viv said she’d thought about inquiring into the possibility of fostering the toddler, who she’d learned was named Carly, at least until a responsible relative could be found or until the child could be placed for adoption.

  But Viv then added, “Of course, that was a silly thought. It made no sense at all. Here I am, a single woman with a job that requires me to work half the night, and then of course I have to sleep half the morning. Why would they ever give an infant to someone like me to foster?”

  “I agree with you that they certainly would not,” the psychologist said. “Still, you say you had impulses about being a foster parent, even if it was impossible given your lifestyle. Why was that, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Viv said. “Pity, I guess. It was all so… pitiful.”

  Viv refused to do more than shake her head when asked if she felt any residue of guilt or responsibility for what had happened to Cindy Kroll and her baby that night, and Viv bristled when the psychiatrist pressed her on it.

  “Why should I?” she said.

  “You shouldn’t,” the shrink replied. “But sometimes our unconscious mind doesn’t understand words like should and shouldn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Viv said. “Just because I had a random thought about how that apartment could be attacked doesn’t mean I had a premonition or something. I’m not a mentalist, you know.”

  “No,” the psychologist said. “You’re not. You were less cynical than the two detectives and your partner.”

  “What do you mean?” Viv asked suspiciously.

  The psychologist said, “Police officers become prematurely cynical from seeing the worst of people and ordinary people at their worst. They don mental and emotional armor in self-defense. They tend to scoff at anything extraordinary. Your suggestion regarding the ladder and the roof was rebuffed as far-fetched, but it wasn’t. You were not cynical. You were trying to be a good police officer by imagining a very unlikely scenario that ultimately came true.”

  Viv didn’t say anything and the psychologist said, “Had you ever seen something very horrific before? Something involving helpless children?”

  Viv hesitated and then said, “I remember one case when an Eighteenth Streeter who called himself the Tax Collector pistol-whipped a street vendor for not paying protection money. He decided he needed to teach all the vendors a lesson and he shot the man’s baby right there in his stroller.”

  The psychologist shook her head slowly and said, “I can only imagine how you felt when you got there.”

  Viv said, “And there was the time we got a call that taught me why detectives who work child abuse are the only coppers who’re never asked about their work by their civilian friends. The call came right after we cleared from roll call. This tot had been burned real bad in the bathtub and his mother said it was an accident. Except that his flesh was burned off from his elbows, straight down from that demarcation line. That meant that the child had been held by the wrists and put down into the scalding water. It turned out that the mother’s boyfriend did it when he got frustrated during a potty training session. When the man was arrested, he said he didn’t know the water was that hot. I was told later that they had to put the skin from dead people on the third-degree burns. It happened on the child’s second birthday. His name was Stevie.”

  The psychologist said, “You know that you can come back and see me anytime, Vivien. You don’t have to wait until you’re ordered to come here.”

  Viv gave the shrink a lopsided smile and said, “Don’t you know that cops consider it wussy to run down here and talk to you people?”

  The psychologist smiled and said, “Oh, yes, how well I know. We have a lonely job around here because of the rampant machismo and super-self-reliance of your colleagues in blue. Believe me, I know all about that.”

  “Well, then, you get it,” Viv said and fell silent.

  The psychologist was quiet for a moment watching Viv gaze through the window as though she’d like to escape. Then she said, “Had you ever felt a strong impulse to foster a child before the incident in Little Armenia?”

  “No, I hadn’t,” Viv said, and looked at the shrink again with a hint of defiance. And again she said, “Why should I?”

  “You shouldn’t,” the psychiatrist said. “But this case was different, wasn’t it? This had to do with Carly’s mother and her baby brother, and feelings of great… discomfort that you were experiencing because of what happened to them. Isn’t that true?”

  “Maybe,” Viv conceded. “Are you trying to tell me that you think I d
o feel somehow responsible?”

  “That man Louis Dryden was responsible,” the psychologist said. “Cindy Kroll bore some responsibility also. She refused to go to a shelter where she and her children would’ve been safe until your detectives could have contacted Louis Dryden and warned him to stay away. You are obviously an extremely responsible person, Vivien, but none of this should become your burden. Given all that was known, the actions of you and your colleagues were reasonable and understandable. This event was an anomaly.”

  “Have we been talking about some sort of… hidden guilt feelings here?” Viv asked. “Is that what we’re talking about?”

  “If we are, I hope we can dispel it,” the shrink said. “The event itself was exceptionally horrific. You saw things that night that nobody should ever see.”

  “I suppose so,” Viv said. Then she said, “That incident in Little Armenia… it would rattle anybody, wouldn’t it?”

  “It certainly would,” the shrink said.

  “And on top of that…”

  The psychologist was quiet until she finally said, “And on top of that? What, Vivien?”

  “Carly was so traumatized and confused that she kept… she kept calling me… Mommy.”

  Both women were silent and Viv was startled to taste tears in her mouth. And then she broke down and wept in her hands. The psychiatrist moved a box of tissues from her desktop closer to Viv Daley’s chair and waited for her tears to stop.

  At midwatch roll call that evening the word was passed from cop to cop that one of the Department’s highest-ranking brass had been caught on a dark street in south L.A. with a hooker in his car. And she was not some special Beyoncé look-alike but just a grungy old streetwalker who probably had every known STD and some new ones that weren’t yet cataloged. When he badged the patrol unit that caught him, he offered the lame excuse that he was “interrogating” the hooker, who quickly got out of his car and continued on her way.